Just a thought
From the moment the accident aircraft descended through 1000' AGL on the EHAM RWY18R G/S the crew were guilty of breaching widely established stabilized approach criteria that should have required them to perform a go around. Which successfully executed would have prevented the accident. Regrettably, the crew do not appear to have been aware of the breach. Perhaps because they were doing such a poor job of monitoring the automation, which also unbeknown to them had laid a trap involving the malfunction of a relatively minor piece of equipment that would come to bite them not once but twice, just a few seconds later and further down the G/S.
Unfortunately for those who perished alongside the flight crew, under the current state of the art in commercial aviation, it is the pilots who are left to determine if and when stabilized approach criteria have been breached and the decision to go round or continue the approach similarly is left to the discretion of pilots.
But when accident report after accident report would seem to regularly fault crews for not monitoring the automation as required, then perhaps its time to recognize that humans including highly trained professionals such as airline pilots, may be badly suited to monitoring activities and resolve to take the decision to go around when stabilized approach criteria have been breached out of the hands of crews and give it to the automation. This could be achieved by yet another suite of aural warnings; Unstable UNSTABLE UNSTABLE! - GO AROUND! GO AROUND! Or less subtly, the automation could be given the authority to invoke TOGA and place the aircraft on a pre-programmed missed approach procedure without human intervention.
Such a system would inevitably require RA input in order to function correctly and build in safeguards to prevent nuisance alerts, but I suggest we not put it on just the one RA source without some form of comparator.
Comments? suggestions?
Only partly TIC.